Was Sydney's smallpox outbreak of 1789 an act of biological warfare against Aboriginal tribes?

[malaise]

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/was-sydneys-smallpox-outbreak-an-act-of-biological-warfare/5395050
<snip>
An outbreak of smallpox in Sydney in 1789 killed thousands of Aborigines and weakened resistance to white settlement. Chris Warren argues that the pandemic was no accident, but rather a deliberate act of biological warfare against Australia’s first inhabitants.

In April 1789, a sudden, unusual, epidemic of smallpox was reported amongst the Port Jackson Aboriginal tribes who were actively resisting settlers from the First Fleet. This outbreak may have killed over 90 per cent of nearby native families and maybe three quarters or half of those between the Hawkesbury River and Port Hacking. It also killed an unknown number at Jervis Bay and west of the Blue Mountains.

Yet the journal of marine captain Watkin Tench indicates that the First Fleet carried bottles of smallpox.

Some authors have argued that the First Fleet had no involvement whatsoever in the outbreak, while others argue that if the Fleet was involved, then it must have been some other disease such as chickenpox.

In the 18th century, the use of smallpox by British forces was not unprecedented. This tactic was promoted by Major Robert Donkin and used by General Jeffrey Amherst in 1763, when smallpox-laden blankets and a handkerchief were distributed to Native Americans from Fort Pitt near the Great Lakes.
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British colonialists were barbarians. Will there ever be karma?

[xchrom]

1. du rec.

[Gman]

2. Is this any surprise from people who would

draw and quarter a person?

[malaise]

6. Very true

And these realities still shock me - don't ask me why.

[Gman]

12. Me too

And they were righteously proud of it too. It's seems when the most unthinkable, inhumane acts are committed, they are done by white people. Name a Black mass murderer where all kinds of freaky shit was done. With the notable exception of the legends about Idi Amin, you can't do it because there are none. There are a handful of Latino mass murderers but they'll just kill you and that's it. They don't like have sex with your corpse, male or female.

[mulsh]

3. Lord Amherst & smallpox, around the same time in the Americas

here's an article with links to Amherst's correspondence. A fine example of the British fight for colonialism at its finest.

https://www.umass.edu/legal/derrico/amherst/lord_jeff.html

[dembotoz]

5. damn --- genocide in the americas

[FarCenter]

10. It was more cost effective than paying a bounty for indian scalps.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalping

During the French and Indian War, in June 12, 1755, Lieutenant Governor Spencer Phips of Massachusetts Bay colony was offering a bounty of £40 for a male Indian scalp, and £20 for scalps of females or of children under 12 years old. In 1756, Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor Robert Morris, in his Declaration of War against the Lenni Lenape (Delaware) people, offered "130 Pieces of Eight, for the Scalp of Every Male Indian Enemy, above the Age of Twelve Years," and "50 Pieces of Eight for the Scalp of Every Indian Woman, produced as evidence of their being killed."

[elias49]

4. That is so disturbing!

Germ warfare in its infancy.

[Mariana]

7. Will there ever be karma?

The people who did this have been dead for a long time. What do you think karma would look like, if it took place today?

[CFLDem]

8. Yes

And?

[SheilaT]

9. There's an excellent book out there

about the smallpox epidemic in this country during the Revolution called Pox American by Elizabeth Anne Fenn.

By the time of our Revolution smallpox was no longer endemic here (I'm not even sure it ever had been), and as a consequence the European Americans had a greatly reduced resistance to the disease. So spreading the disease was very effective.

In a related note, by the third quarter or so of the 19th century a much milder strain of smallpox evolved, known as variola minor. It had a vastly lower death rate (if I'm recalling correctly something like 1-2%), did not cause scarring, and because its victims weren't as sick, they remained ambulatory and therefore spread the disease more readily. Because of this last, the variola minor form was rapidly replacing regular smallpox, variola major, meaning smallpox at that time was moving rapidly towards becoming a relative harmless childhood disease like measles, mumps, chicken pox, etc. But then effective smallpox vaccinations were developed and over time the disease was eradicated in the wild. Someone wrote an entire book about the last major smallpox epidemic in this country and how universal vaccination against the disease came about.

As a matter of trivia, the last smallpox outbreak in the U.S. was in 1948, and I've also read when it occurred, it became clear that having had a vaccination even fifty years earlier still provided immunity.

[marmar]

11. k/r

[mathematic]

13. An Englishman developed the vaccine for smallpox

The lives saved have more than equaled the lives taken. So it looks like karma dictates the British have some leeway to kill more people.

Of course, I don't believe in karma.